Business intelligence in banking: A literature analysis from 2002 to 2013 using Text Mining and latent Dirichlet allocation

telligence applications for the banking industry. Searches were performed in relevant journals resulting in 219 articles published between 2002 and 2013. To analyze such a large number of manuscripts, text mining techniques were used in pursuit for relevant terms on both business intelligence and banking domains. Moreover, the latent Dirichlet allocation modeling was used in or- der to group articles in several relevant topics. The analysis was conducted using a dictionary of terms belonging to both banking and business intelli- gence domains. Such procedure allowed for the identification of relationships between terms and topics grouping articles, enabling to emerge hypotheses regarding research directions. To confirm such hypotheses, relevant articles were collected and scrutinized, allowing to validate the text mining proce- dure. The results show that credit in banking is clearly the main application trend, particularly predicting risk and thus supporting credit approval or de- nial. There is also a relevant interest in bankruptcy and fraud prediction. Customer retention seems to be associated, although weakly, with targeting, justifying bank offers to reduce churn. In addition, a large number of ar- ticles focused more on business intelligence techniques and its applications, using the banking industry just for evaluation, thus, not clearly acclaiming for benefits in the banking business. By identifying these current research topics, this study also highlights opportunities for future research.

A new perspective of students allocation satisfaction in engineering courses in Portugal

Publicado em "AIP Conference Proceedings" Vol. 1648

Objectives of social entrepreneurs and federal lending programs, and the optimal allocation of external funds

Magdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Wirtschaftswiss., Diss., 2010

Differences on allocation of available resources, in growth, reproduction, and survival, in an exotic gastropod of Physidae compared to an endemic one

Physa acuta Draparnaud, 1805 is an invasive gastropod that can affect local species. In Argentina, it is widespread and abundant, even in environments inhabited by the native species Stenophysa marmorata Guilding, 1828. Its predominance raises the question whether this could be explained by a more successful energy allocation in functional requirements (growth, reproduction and survival) compared to S. marmorata. This study was aimed at comparing growth rates, as well as survival and fecundity, between both species under laboratory conditions. Individuals born on the same day were grouped in four per aquaria and kept under controlled conditions of food, light, and temperature. Snails were weekly measured (maximum shell length), and growth rates were calculated using the Von Bertalanffy's equation. The number of eggs and survivors were grouped by week. Stenophysa marmorata was larger at birth than Physa acuta and invested more energy in growth, delaying sexual maturity. This resulted in a disadvantage in fecundity and survival compared to P. acuta, which had a lower growth rate but matured earlier and survived longer. Furthermore, the growth of P. acuta was not affected by reproduction, its reproductive period was longer, consequently with more eggs laid than S. marmorata.

A cooperative appproach to queue allocation of indivisible objects

We consider the allocation of a finite number of indivisible objects to the same number of agents according to an exogenously given queue. We assume that the agents collaborate in order to achieve an efficient outcome for society. We allow for side-payments and provide a method for obtaining stable outcomes.

Resource-monotonicity for house allocation problems

We study a simple model of assigning indivisible objects (e.g., houses, jobs, offices, etc.) to agents. Each agent receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not possible. We completely describe all rules satisfying efficiency and resource-monotonicity. The characterized rules assign the objects in a sequence of steps such that at each step there is either a dictator or two agents "trade" objects from their hierarchically specified "endowments."

Personal redistribution and the regional allocation of public investment

How should an equity-motivated policy-marker allocate public capital (infrastructure) across regions. Should it aim at reducing interregional differences in per capita output, or at maximizing total output? Such a normative question is examined in a model where the policy-marker is exclusively concerned about personal inequality and has access to two policy instruments. (i) a personal tax-transfer system (taxation is distortionary), and (ii) the regional allocation of public investment. I show that the case for public investment as a significant instrument for interpersonal redistribution is rather weak. In the most favorable case, when the tax code is constrained to be uniform across regions, it is optimal to distort the allocation of public investment in favor of the poor regions, but only to a limited extent. The reason is that poor individuals are relatively more sensitive to public trans fers, which are maximized by allocating public investment efficiently. If! the tax code can vary across regions then the optimal policy may involve an allocation of public investment distorted in favor of the rich regions.

RADIC II: a fault tolerant architecture with flexible dynamic redundancy

The demand for computational power has been leading the improvement of the High Performance Computing (HPC) area, generally represented by the use of distributed systems like clusters of computers running parallel applications. In this area, fault tolerance plays an important role in order to provide high availability isolating the application from the faults effects. Performance and availability form an undissociable binomial for some kind of applications. Therefore, the fault tolerant solutions must take into consideration these two constraints when it has been designed. In this dissertation, we present a few side-effects that some fault tolerant solutions may presents when recovering a failed process. These effects may causes degradation of the system, affecting mainly the overall performance and availability. We introduce RADIC-II, a fault tolerant architecture for message passing based on RADIC (Redundant Array of Distributed Independent Fault Tolerance Controllers) architecture. RADIC-II keeps as maximum as possible the RADIC features of transparency, decentralization, flexibility and scalability, incorporating a flexible dynamic redundancy feature, allowing to mitigate or to avoid some recovery side-effects.

Impact of clinical practice guidelines on priorisation for intensive care beds allocation in high-risk acute coronary syndrome patients: does age play a role?

QUESTION UNDER STUDY: To assess which high-risk acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patient characteristics played a role in prioritising access to intensive care unit (ICU), and whether introducing clinical practice guidelines (CPG) explicitly stating ICU admission criteria altered this practice. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All consecutive patients with ACS admitted to our medical emergency centre over 3 months before and after CPG implementation were prospectively assessed. The impact of demographic and clinical characteristics (age, gender, cardiovascular risk factors, and clinical parameters upon admission) on ICU hospitalisation of high-risk patients (defined as retrosternal pain of prolonged duration with ECG changes and/or positive troponin blood level) was studied by logistic regression. RESULTS: Before and after CPG implementation, 328 and 364 patients, respectively, were assessed for suspicion of ACS. Before CPG implementation, 36 of the 81 high-risk patients (44.4%) were admitted to ICU. After CPG implementation, 35 of the 90 high-risk patients (38.9%) were admitted to ICU. Male patients were more frequently admitted to ICU before CPG implementation (OR=7.45, 95% CI 2.10-26.44), but not after (OR=0.73, 95% CI 0.20-2.66). Age played a significant role in both periods (OR=1.57, 95% CI 1.24-1.99), both young and advanced ages significantly reducing ICU admission, but to a lesser extent after CPG implementation. CONCLUSION: Prioritisation of access to ICU for high-risk ACS patients was age-dependent, but focused on the cardiovascular risk factor profile. CPG implementation explicitly stating ICU admission criteria decreased discrimination against women, but other factors are likely to play a role in bed allocation.

Differential allocation and deployment of direct and indirect defences by Vicia sepium along elevation gradients

Dissecting drivers of plant defence investment remains central for understanding the assemblage of communities across different habitats. There is increasing evidence that direct defence strategies against herbivores, including secondary metabolites production, differ along ecological gradients in response to variation in biotic and abiotic conditions. In contrast, intraspecific variation in indirect defences remains unexplored. Here, we investigated variation in herbivory rate, resistance to herbivores, and indirect defences in ant-attracting Vicia species along the elevation gradient of the Alps. Specifically, we compared volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ant attraction in high and low elevation ecotypes. Consistent with adaptation to the lower herbivory conditions that we detected at higher elevations in the field, high elevation plants were visited by fewer ants and were more susceptible to herbivore attack. In parallel, constitutive volatile organic compound production and subsequent ant attraction were lower in the high elevation ecotypes. We observed an elevation-driven trade-off between constitutive and inducible production of VOCs and ant attraction along the environmental cline. At higher elevations, inducible defences increased, while constitutive defence decreased, suggesting that the high elevation ecotypes compensate for lower indirect constitutive defences only after herbivore attack. Synthesis. Overall, direct and indirect defences of plants vary along elevation gradients. Our findings show that plant allocation to defences are subject to trade-offs depending on local conditions, and point to a feedback mechanism linking local herbivore pressure, predator abundance and the defence investment of plants.

Plasticity in sex allocation in the plant Mercurialis annua is greater for hermaphrodites sampled from dimorphic than from monomorphic populations.

Plants are notoriously variable in gender, ranging in sex allocation from purely male through hermaphrodite to purely female. This variation can have both a genetic and an adaptive plastic component. In gynodioecious species, where females co-occur with hermaphrodites, hermaphrodites tend to shift their allocation towards greater maleness when growing under low-resource conditions, either as a result of hermaphrodites shifting away from an expensive female function, or because of enhanced siring advantages in the presence of females. Similarly, in the androdioecious plant Mercurialis annua, where hermaphrodites co-exist with males, hermaphrodites also tend to enhance their relative male allocation under low-resource conditions. Here, we ask whether this response differs between hermaphrodites that have been evolving in the presence of males, in a situation analogous to that supposed for gynodioecious populations, vs. those that have been evolving in their absence. We grew hermaphrodites of M. annua from populations in which males were either present or absent under different levels of nutrient availability and compared their reaction norms. We found that, overall, hermaphrodites from populations with males tended to be more female than those from populations lacking males. Importantly, hermaphrodites' investment in pollen and seed production was more plastic when they came from populations with males than without them, reducing their pollen production at low resource availability and increasing their seed production at high resource availability. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that plasticity in sex allocation is enhanced in hermaphrodites that have likely been exposed to variation in mating opportunities due to fluctuations in the frequency of co-occurring males.